Complexities

Not so long ago I read a discussion on the “fetishizing” of our culture. Essentially, this is when something very basic is arbitrarily made very complex. Typically when this happens, a whole subset of followers emerge around this fetish and also somewhat arbitrarily appoint themselves as experts on it. The example used in this particular instance was salt. The author was ranting about a store in New York City that sold only variations of salt – different textures, colors, and salts from various geographic locales. The author railed against an article written on this salt purveyor in the New York Times. Here, the NYTimes author waxed eloquent – almost poetic - on the slight gradations in flavor evident in these salts. With respect to those with heightened culinary sensitivity, this sounds like a grandiose display of self-importance. (Hello, I’m a writer for the New York Times. I also have an extraordinarily refined palate. Perhaps you have read my latest expose on all things salty.) The original author agreed with me. His point was essentially – where are we going with all of this? The complexities we’re imbuing on such elemental aspects of life are unnecessary. I agree. However, I see it everywhere and it’s as if some people are jockeying for a predominant position in the race to know, or to seem to know, a lot about very little.

I consider myself somewhat of a quasi-expert on this phenomenon. After completely burning out in a full-time position during law school, I took a part-time gig at a local Starbucks. It looked like fun, and the baristas were always preternaturally happy. Figuring I could use a dose of irrational caffeine-induced enthusiasm, I embarked on what would become a study on the human capacity for being a dick. Perhaps not coincidentally, I no longer drink coffee – so forgive me if I am unsympathetic to all the ways the world worships this wicked brew. I grew to love and respect the customers who came in and unceremoniously ordered their Venti, Bold, no fuss, no frills. But for each of them, there were three who ordered a cup of coffee with ten different specifications. I’m not talking cream and sugar specifications. I’m talking about requiring a certain amount of room left in the cup with exacting specificity, heating soy milk to precisely 160 degrees, pouring the shots of espresso immediately after they were brewed, coating the cup with syrup instead of simply pumping it in the bottom – the list is endless.

This certainly isn’t the only place where this is evident. Not so long ago, I was at a bar with my cousin. He went to the bathroom and asked that I get him a Bud Light. Pretty standard fare. I ordered my drink (a Diet Coke) and the Bud Light. It was as if I asked the barkeep to urinate into a glass. “We don’t serve Bud Light here.” He spit the words “Bud Light” out as if it were blasphemous. My cousin opted for the Yuengling, but clearly the bar man had us pegged for classless swine. It was the kind of place where people put a lot of thought into looking like they don’t put any thought into how they look – just to give you a sense of the place. I sat and analyzed the menu. As expected, they had a diverse selection of beer - and a fairly unappetizing selection of fried foods. (Methinks your palate is selectively refined.) I looked around the room and no one appeared to be swirling their glasses and rolling the beer around the tongue, so as to parse apart the complexity of the flavor. (Ah, this one has a floral nose . . . ) It really looked like your run-of-the-mill bar full of dispossessed brooding young adults. They just happened to be getting shiesse-faced off of a Hefeweizen instead of domestic swill.

Back to the ‘bux - Over time, something started to happen to the way I viewed the most demanding customers. Instead of being frustrating, it started to become sad. Most of them were regulars, and the pieces of who these people were outside of their beverage-bitchiness would slowly come together. The picture was often not very pretty. Everbody’s got this need to feel special, and it seemed like that for some of these people – making hyper-specific demands on their coffee was as much individual attention as they would get all day. For five minutes each day, they were unique.

I suppose creating fetish areas gives people some comfort. Whether its knowledge on some obscure style of music, a salt preference, beer, literature, Star Wars – you name it – everyone needs to feel like they’ve mastered something that isn’t as readily understood by the population at large. I understand the need to feel like you’ve deviated from the norm. But when does trying to be different, or more complex, just make you a jerk? And where's the similar devotion to the beauty in simplicity?